Category Archives: The Daily Grindhouse

The TSL’s Horror Grindhouse: The First Power (dir by Robert Reskinoff)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

In this 1990 horror film, Lou Diamond Phillips plays Russell Logan, a Los Angeles police detective who specializes in capturing and sometimes killing serial killers.  (“So far,” a news reporter breathlessly tells us, “Detective Logan has captured or killed three serial killers!”)  His latest triumph is the capture of Patrick Channing (Jeff Kober), also known as the Pentagram Killer because he carves a pentagram on his victims.

Logan captures Channing thanks to a tip from a psychic named Tess (Tracy Griffith).  Tess specifically made Logan promise her that he wouldn’t push for Channing to get the death penalty.  However, after Logan captures him, he goes back on his word and Channing is sentenced to die in the gas chamber.  To be honest, I wasn’t aware that detectives had the power to decide whether or not to go for the death penalty when it comes to prosecuting murder cases.  As far as I’ve known, that’s always been the job of the district attorney’s office.  Maybe they do things differently out in California….

Anyway, Channing smiles when he’s sentenced to death and then he smiles again when he’s executed.  Logan shrugs all of that off but suddenly, the pentagram murders start up again.  The murderer is killing people in the exact same way that Channing did and he also appears to be targeting the people who were involved in Channing’s capture.  Meanwhile, Tess is running around angry because she specifically told Logan not to allow Channing to be executed.

Hmmmm …. have you figured out what’s going on, yet?

Of course you have!  That’s because you’ve seen a horror movie before.  From the minute that Channing was sentenced to die, you probably knew that Channing would eventually come back from the dead and start murdering people all over again.  It turns out that, by executing Channing, the state of California has granted him the first power, i.e. resurrection.  By committing more murders, Channing is hoping to unlock all of the other powers.  Those powers include the power to appear and disappear at will, possess other people, jump off of roof tops, and mockingly laugh at anyone who tries to stop him.

Apparently, Detective Logan is not a fan of horror movies because it takes him a while to figure all of this out.  (We should keep in mind that he’s a cop so his job is to be skeptical of claims of people returning from the dead.)  But once he starts hearing Channing’s disembodied voice and getting attacked by possessed priests and homeless women, he really has no other option but to accept the truth and work with Tess to try to end Channing’s reign of terror.

The First Power is one of those horror films that’s extremely predictable but effective nonetheless.  Lou Diamond Phillips manages to maintain a straight face, regardless of how outlandish this film gets and Jeff Kober seems to be having a blast as the flamboyantly evil Patrick Channing.  Channing jumps off of rooftops and through windows with a graceful aplomb and the film actually has some fun with the idea of Channing skipping from body to body.  The First Power is often dumb but always entertaining.

The TSL’s Horror Grindhouse: Beyond The Time Barrier (dir by Edgar G. Ulmer)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

This 1960 film tells the story of Bill Allison (Robert Clarke), an air force test pilot who flies his test craft into space and then returns to discover that Earth has totally changed!

The Air Force base where he previously worked is now deserted and desolate.  After he’s captured by a group of silent soldiers, Allison is taken to an underground city known as the Citadel.  He meets the head of the city, an older man known as The Supreme (Vladimer Sokoloff).  The Supreme explains that only he and his second-in-command, The Captain (Red Morgan), can speak and hear.  The rest of humanity communicates through telepathy.  Though the Supreme’s granddaughter, Princess Trirene (Darlene Tompkins), telepathically insists that Allison is not a threat, the Supreme and the Captain still exile him to live with a bunch of angry, bald mutants who are determined to destroy the city.  Allison meets three other exiles and discovers that they too are time travelers.  The scientists explains that Bill has found himself in the far future.  The year is no longer 1960.  No, the year is …. 2024!

OH MY GOD, WE’VE ONLY GOT TWO YEARS LEFT!

Actually, we’ve probably got less than two years left.  This is October and the film appears to be taking place in the summer so we’ve probably only got 18 months to go!

(Cue Jennifer Lawrence: “We’re all gonna die!”  Cue Leonardo Di Caprio: “I’m so scared!”  Okay, tell them both to shut up now.)

Anyway, Allison assumes that society must have collapsed due to a global war but the scientists explain that the first manned spacetrip to the moon actually ushered in an era of peace.  (Wow, how did I miss this?)  In fact, humans had colonized the Moon, Mars, and Venus by 1970.  (Woo hoo!  Yay, humanity!)  However, years of nuclear testing had weakened the Earth’s atmosphere and, in 1971, the planet was bombarded by cosmic rays.  (Uh oh….)  Humanity was forced to move into underground cities.  Some of them developed telepathy and became super advanced.  Others became bald mutants.  Unfortunately, everyone is now sterile and the Supreme probably expects Allison to impregnate Trirene and do his part to repopulate the planet.

On the one hand, Allison and Trirene are falling in love.  Allison is handsome and strong.  Trirene has pretty hair and is the only citizen of the Citadel who gets to wear anything flattering.  They’re a cute couple.  On the other hand, if Allison sticks around the repopulate the planet, he’ll never be able to go back to his present and warn everyone about the upcoming cosmic ray plague.  Plus, it soon becomes clear that the scientists have an agenda of their own.  Allison finds himself torn between the two factions trying to control the Citadel.

Made for next to no money and filmed at Fair Park in Dallas, Beyond The Time Barrier is a surprisingly good film.  It was directed by Edgar G. Ulmer, an Austrian director who started out as an associate of Fritz Lang’s and who followed Lang to the United States.  Ulmer made films for the Poverty Row studios and he was a master of creating atmosphere on a budget.  He was one of the pioneers of film noir and he brought that same style to his horror and sci-fi films.  As envisioned by Ulmer in Beyond The Time Barrier, the future is full of menacing shadows, dangerous con artists, and untrustworthy authority figures.  It’s a fatalistic film, one that ends on a surprisingly downbeat note.  Even if Allison can save humanity, will it really be worth all the trouble?  Much like Detour, Ulmer’s best-known film, Beyond The Time Barrier plays out like a deliberately-paced dream, full of surreal moments and ominous atmosphere.

Beyond The Time Barrier is available on YouTube and Prime.  Watch it now before we have to go underground.

The TSL’s Horror Grindhouse: Cutting Class (dir by Raspo Pallenberg)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Someone is murdering the students and the teachers at the local high school and it’s up to Paula Carson (Jill Schoelen), the studious daughter of the local DA (Martin Mull), to figure out who is responsible!

Though the principal (Roddy McDowall, who seemed to be cast as a lot of bizarre school employees during the latter half of his career) is a perv and the janitor (Robert Glaudini) fancies himself as being some sort of bizarre ninja with a mop, it soon becomes apparent that there’s really only two viable suspects. One of them is Brian Woods (Donavon Leitch), who has just returned home after spending several months in a mental hospital where he was regularly given electroshock therapy. The other is Dwight Ingalls (Brad Pitt), the alcoholic jock who is under tremendous pressure to win a basketball scholarship and who also happens to be Paula’s boyfriend! Brian and Dwight were friends when they were younger. Now, Dwight spends all of his time bullying Brian and Brian spends all of his time staring at Paula. Who could the murderer be!?

Actually, you won’t be surprised at all when the identity of the murderer is revealed. You’ve probably already guessed who the killer is. A campy slasher film from 1989, Cutting Class doesn’t exactly win any points for originality. If Cutting Class is remembered for anything, it’s for providing Brad Pitt with an early leading role. Pitt, it should be said, is totally convincing as Dwight. On the one hand, he’s such a jerk that it’s difficult to really like him but, on the other hand, he looks like Brad Pitt so you totally can’t blame Paula for putting up with him. For that matter, both Leitch and Schoelen give convincing performances as well. When you’ve got a trio as talented as these three, it’s kind of a shame that Cutting Class wasn’t a better film.

Cutting Class tries to mix horror and comedy but the comedy is too broad (Roddy McDowall leers like a cartoon wolf) while the horror is not quite horrific enough and, as such, the film never really settles on a consistent or an interesting tone. Whenever the film starts to get into a horror grove, Martin Mull shows up like a character in an overplayed Saturday Night Live skit. Whenever the film starts to find itself as a comedy, someone is horribly murdered and you’re totally taken out of the mood. This is also another one of those films where the characters randomly switch from being ludicrously stupid to unnaturally intelligent from scene-to-scene. The killer, for instance, is diabolically clever until the film’s final moments, at which point the murderer suddenly gets very talky and very easily fooled.

Cutting Class is occasionally interesting as a time capsule. It’s from 1989, after all. And it’s interesting to see Brad Pitt playing the type of character one would more likely expect to see on a very special episode of Saved By The Bell. Otherwise, this one is fairly forgettable.

6 Horrific Trailer For October 16th, 2022

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

It’s Sunday and it’s October and that means that it’s time for another edition of Lisa Marie’s Favorite Grindhouse trailers!  For today, we have six trailers from the early 80s!  These where the years when the only thing bigger than the Italian zombie boom was the American slasher boom.  And we’ve got the trailers to prove it!

1. Friday the 13th (1980)

Needless to say, if you’re going to talk about American horror in the early 80s, you have to start with Friday the 13th.  Interestingly enough, the first Friday the 13th was less a traditional slasher film and more an American take on the giallo genre.

2. Halloween II (1981)

The 80s were also the year that Hollywood learned to love the sequel.  As a result, Michael Myers returned and so did Dr. Loomis.  The current franchise claims that all of this never happened but we all know better.

3. The Beyond (1981)

While the Americans were dealing with slashers, the Italians were committing themselves to the zombies.  Though Lucio Fulci’s The Beyond was not widely appreciated when first released, it’s reputation has grown over the years.

4. The House By The Cemetery (1981)

Eventually, Fulci combined both zombies and slashers with The House By The Cemetery.

5. Poltergeist (1982)

Of course, not every horror film that came out in the early 80s was about a slasher or a zombie.  Poltergeist was a haunted house story.  Though the trailer says “Steven Spielberg production,” the film was directed by Tobe Hooper.

6. Halloween III: Season of the Witch (1982)

Even the Halloween franchise tried to do something new with the third film in the series.  Like The Beyond, this is a film that was underappreciated when released but which has since become a horror classic.

The TSL’s Horror Grindhouse: The Killer Shrews (dir by Ray Kellogg)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Genetic modification.  Sure, it sounds like a good idea.  But are the results ever worth it?

Dr. Marlowe Cragus (Baruch Lumet) thought it was a good idea.  That why he and his daughter, Anne (Ingrid Goude), and Anne’s boyfriend, Jerry (Ken Curtis), all moved to an isolated island.  Dr. Cragis though he could perform some experiments on some shrews and that he would unlock the secret of how to …. well, who knows what Dr. Cragis thought he was actually doing.  (I mean, to be honest, who is really sure what a shrew really is?)  Cragis claims that he was trying to end world hunger but that sounds like a convenient excuse.  To be honest, it seems like Dr. Cragis was just experimenting for the sake of experimenting.

Unfortunately, Cragis’s experiments somehow led to the shrews turning into giant and carnivorous beasts.  At first, the doctor kept them locked up.  But then Anne broke up with Jerry and Jerry got drunk and he let all the shrews go free.  Yep, it’s a mess.  Now, the shrews are running around the island and the doctor and everyone else is trapped in the lab.  Boat captain Thorne Sherman (James Best) has arrived to take everyone back to the mainland but, unfortunately, there’s a hurricane approaching.  The humans will have to survive one more night on the island of …. THE KILLER SHREWS!

Directed by Ray Kellogg, The Killer Shrews was filmed in 1959.  It was a regional production, filmed just outside of my hometown of Dallas and released to local drive-ins.  It did well enough to get national distribution and it continues to be popular among aficionados of bad cinema.  The main problem with The Killer Shrews is that the shrews themselves are obviously just dogs that are wearing shrew masks.  For the most part, the dogs seem to be happy to be there.  I’m pretty sure that I saw a few of them wagging their tails shortly before launching their attack on the humans.  We’re told that the shrews are killers but they don’t look like they’ve ever killed anything.  Instead, they look like very good boys.  One gets the feeling that they were a lot of fun to play with between filming.

That said, The Killer Shrews is entertaining if you’re looking for a short movie that will inspire a good laugh or two.  James Best and Ken Curtis play romantic rivals and the fact that they both attempt to give serious performances only serves to highlight the absurdity of a group of people being held prisoner by a pack of shrews.  Baruch Lumet, the father of director Sidney Lumet, acts up a storm in the role of Dr. Cragis, yelling all of his dialogue like the stage veteran that he was.  And, of course, the dogs playing the shrews appear to be having the time of their lives. Hopefully, someone tossed around a tennis ball with them after they finished their scenes because they definitely earned the reward.

The Killer Shrews is not exactly a killer movie but at least the dogs are cute!

The TSL’s Horror Grindhouse: Planet of the Dinosaurs (dir by James Shea)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

This 1977 film begins with a bunch of goofy-looking astronauts crash-landing on a desert planet. After their spaceship slowly sinks into a lake, the astronauts try to set up camp so that they can wait to be rescued. Unfortunately for them, there’s some dinosaurs living on the planet and the astronauts soon find themselves being stalked by prehistoric predators!

Now, it’s true that I said that this was unfortunate for the astronauts. However, it’s very fortunate for us the viewers because the dinosaurs are a hundred times more adorable than the astronauts.  Indeed, the astronauts tend to be out-of-shape and the men have made some truly unfortunate hair decisions.  The female astronauts, meanwhile, all seems as if they should be posing in front of a car at an auto show.  Everyone delivers their lines with a good deal of forced drama, destroying the myth of the calm and cool astronaut.  Sorry, Tom Wolfe, but there’s no right stuff to be found amongst this crew. Again, we are fortunate that this is one of those low-budget sci-fi films that made use of model dinosaurs and stop motion animation.  There’s something just undeniably fun about watching a bunch of hammy, unknown actors pretend to be terrified of what appears to be a child’s toy. (The most menacing of the dinosaurs is a dead ringer for the dinosaur from the Toy Story films.) Planet of the Dinosaurs is a deeply silly movie but, if you’re a fan of dinosaurs and old timey special effects, you’ll find a lot to enjoy. Just don’t make the mistake of taking anything about it seriously. Of course, the fact that the majority of the astronauts look like they should be dancing under a disco ball instead of exploring space will probably ensure that you stop taking the film seriously long before even the first dinosaur shows up.

In fact, my only real complaint about this film is that there simply aren’t enough dinosaurs. Yes, there’s a T-Rex. And yes, there’s that one-horned dinosaur that looks like a really dangerous armadillo. There’s a few other dinosaurs as well but, to be honest, I feel like a Planet of the Dinosaurs should just be crawling with them. Instead, it appears that there were only six or seven dinosaurs on this planet.  I guess it’s possible that there could have been more dinosaurs on the other side of the planet but still, the planet seemed to be pretty sparsely populated.  Maybe the other dinosaurs were hibernating.

Now, you might be wondering how all these dinosaurs showed up on the planet. Early on, one of the astronauts establishes that the planet is on the same “evolutionary track” as Earth, it’s just several years behind. So, apparently, there are dinosaurs on every Earth-like planet. I guess that’s fine but I was hoping for a Planet of the Apes-style reveal, with the Statue of Liberty or some other monument suddenly showing up. A planet where dinosaurs evolved from men? That would have made the movie a true classic!

Even without the Statue of Liberty, Planet of the Dinosaurs is fun. Silly, but fun.

The TSL’s Horror Grindhouse: Attack of the Giant Leeches (dir by Bernard Kowalski)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

It’s time for nonstop drama in the bayous!

Shopkeeper Dave Walker (Bruno VeSota) knows that his wife, Liz (Yvette Vickers), is cheating on him with his best friend, Cal (Michael Emmett)! Dave is determined to catch them in the act and force them to walk out into the middle of the swamp at the end of his shotgun. That would be bad enough but what makes the swamp even more dangerous is the fact that there are two giant leeches living in the water, grabbing whoever they can get and dragging them back to their underground cave! Agck! While Dave plots to get revenge on his cheating wife, game warden Steve Benton (Ken Clark) tries to convince everyone that something really needs to be done about those giant leeches.

Filmed and released in 1959 and produced by Roger Corman, Attack of the Giant Leeches is not a particularly complicated film. The leeches live in the swamp. For various reasons, people keep wandering into the swamp. The leeches keep feeding until eventually, the authorities decide to do something about it. The simplicity of it all is why the film works. Why are there giant leeches in the swamp? How did the leeches become giants in the first place? Who cares? What’s important is that they’re there and they’re hungry for blood. At this point, why doesn’t matter. What matter is what is going to be done about them.

Clocking in at barely an hour and filmed by TV director Bernard L. Kowalski, Attack of the Giant Leeches is an enjoyably overhearted slice of Southern melodrama, full of humid atmosphere and sultry dialogue.  The film does a wonderful job of capturing the overheated feeling of being stuck in the country and not having anything better to do than cause some trouble.  I mean, it’s very easy for people to say what other should or shouldn’t do in their spare time.  But, when you’re actually living in a swamp, you do what you have to do in order to pass the time.  At its best, Attack of the Giant Leeches is like Roger Corman meets Tennessee Williams.  It’s Southern Gothic, with even bigger leeches than usual.  Flannery O’Connor would have been proud.

Yvette Vickers plays the role of Liz with a wonderfully defiant attitude. She’s going to do what she wants when she wants to and if that means running the risk of being forced to walk into the swamp, so be it. If she’s stuck in the bayous, she might as well have a good time.  Liz may be frustrated but can you blame her? Meanwhile, VeSota turns Dave into a rather tragic buffoon. Even when he finally thinks that he’s about get his revenge, it turns out that the universe has other plans in store for him.  In the end, Dave is fortune’s fool.  No wonder stiff but earnest Ken Clark really can’t compete with either of them when it comes to capturing the audience’s attention.

Attack of the Giant Leeches is short but enjoyable and, because the copyright wasn’t renewed, it’s in the public domain and it’s very easy to watch for free. Watch it this Halloween and definitely stay out of the swamp!

The TSL’s Horror Grindhouse: Revealer (dir by Luke Boyce)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Taking place in 1980s Chicago, Revealer tells the story of two seemingly different women.

Angie (Caito Aase) is a stripper who spend most of her day in an incredibly sleazy peep show booth.  The men that she dances for are a collection of grotesque pervs.  (Keep an eye out and you’ll notice a sign warning that “wet dollar bills” will not be accepted.  Ewww!)  Angie is under no illusions about where she’s working or who is paying to watch her but she needs the money.  She’s putting up with a lot of crap in order to giver her nephew the type of stable life that she’s never had and, understandably, she doesn’t have much patience for anyone who would judge her for it.

Sally (Shaina Schrooten) is someone who spends almost all of her time judging.  For weeks, she has been leading protests in front of Angie’s place of employment.  As soon as Angie shows up for an extra shift, she is confronted by Sally.  Sally claims that Angie is “a harlot” who is leading people down the path of sin and damnation.  Angie says that Sally is just jealous because she’s never truly live her life.

Together …. they solve crimes!

No, actually, they don’t.  Instead, they find themselves forced to deal with some theological issues when a horned demon unleashes an army of snakes on the world.  Angie is trapped in her peep show booth, with no way to get out.  Sally, fleeing from the demons, ends up outside the same booth.  Sally is convinced that the apocalypse has begun.  Angie just wants to get back to her nephew.  Despite their differing views and their initially antagonistic relationship, Angie and Sally are going to have to work together in order to survive.  Along the way, hidden truths are revealed.  Angie and Sally learn that they’re not so different and they even start to become friends.  But does that matter, considering that the world apparently ended in 1987?

I had a mixed reaction to Revealer.  On the one hand, there’s something wonderfully subversive about setting a film about the end of the world in the distant past.  If nothing else, it keeps the viewer off-balance.  (I was reminded a bit of how 2001’s Donnie Darko predicted that the world would end in 1988.)  As well, the two leads both did a good job with their characters, adding depth and nuance to two roles that could have easily become clichés.  In the role of Sally, Shaina Schrooten gave an especially good performance.  I wasn’t particularly shocked when Sally revealed her big secret but Schrooten’s performance still made the scene effective.

On the negative side, the snakes were frightening but the demon who controlled them obviously fell prey to the film’s low budget and looked a bit less impressive.  As well, the script itself was often overwritten.  Sally and Angie’s constant debate over religion felt more than a little heavy-handed.  (I mean, it’s easy to win an argument when the screenwriter is on your side.)  Even more importantly, they tended to disrupt the flow of the film.  Too many scenes stopped dead in their tracks so that Sally could quote the Bible and Angie could get upset about it.  Since neither had anything to say about their beliefs that hadn’t already been said in a hundred other movies, their arguments were occasionally a bit dull, despite the best efforts of Caito Aase and Shaina Schrooten.

Revealer was uneven, though the ending was certainly effective and both of the lead actresses did a good job bringing their characters to life.  Watching the film, I wondered if maybe the world did end in 1987 and the rest of us just haven’t noticed yet.

The TSL’s Horror Grindhouse: Creature of Destruction (dir by Larry Buchanan)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

In this 1967 film from venerable B-movie director Larry Buchanan, a psychic con artist uses hypnosis to bring back into existence a prehistoric, humanoid amphibian.

Wait?

What?

Okay, so the story doesn’t make much sense.  In fact, I would be lying if I said that I fully understood the film, despite the fact that I sat through all 88 minutes of it on Saturday night.  Basically, Dr. Basso (Les Tremayne) is a hypnotist and an occult historian.  He’s bitter about the fact that the world doesn’t appreciate him or take him seriously, despite the fact that he spends almost the entire film wearing a tuxedo and he has a head of silver hair that would have made even the great Criswell jealous.  So, Basso decides that the best way to prove his powers would be start predicting when people are going to die.  And the way he does that is by hypnotizing his assistant, Doreena (Pat Delaney).

Somehow, hypnotizing Doreena causes this prehistoric humanoid monster thing to rise out of the nearby lake so that it can kill whoever Dr. Basso wants dead.  It’s interesting that Dr. Basso could figure out how to bring an extinct creature back to life but he could come up with a less destructive way to prove his powers.  This is just my opinion but it seems like he could have just displayed the prehistoric monster and that would have proven his powers far more effectively than committing murders.  Dr. Basso’s plan is needlessly complicated.  Neither Dr. Basso nor the film ever seem to consider what would happen if he was asked to prove his powers while performing somewhere that wasn’t conveniently located near a lake.  If Dr.  Basso ever plays Vegas, he’s in trouble.

Anyway, it falls of Lt. Blake (Roger Ready) and Captain Dell (Aron Kincaid) to figure out how to stop Dr. Basso.  Captain Dell is not just an expert on the occult but he’s also an Air Force psychiatrist, so he goes through the entire movie wearing his uniform.  Dell being in the Air Force doesn’t really figure into the plot otherwise.  He could just as easily be in private practice.  One gets the feeling that he was made an Air Force captain just because someone had the uniform and it looked good on Aron Kincaid.

Creature of Destruction is a fairly confusing film.  Unfortunately, it’s also a rather boring film.  Larry Buchanan was a prolific director but he was never a particularly good one.  Some directors knew how to take advantage of a low budget and less than compelling actors.  Unfortunately, Buchanan really wasn’t one of them.  Still, the lake scenery is nice and it’s kind of fun to watch the monster waddle across the screen.  As  well, there are two musical interludes that come out of nowhere but which are amusing in a late 60s beach movie sort of way.  So, the film has that going for it.  Otherwise, not even hypnosis will help you get through Creature of Destruction.

The TSL’s Horror Grindhouse: Studio 666 (dir by B.J. McDonnell)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

In Studio 666, the members of Foo Fighters play themselves.  Struggling with writer’s block and hoping to remain musically relevant in a world where the culture belongs to the young, the band heads to an Encino mansion so that they can work on their latest album.  The mansion is infamous because years ago, another band was murdered while attempting to record there.  (Oddly enough, Jenna Ortega plays the drummer of the murdered band.  Ortega had quite a year as far as the horror genre is concerned.)

The band arrives at the mansion and things quickly go downhill.  The band isn’t getting along.  Lead singer Dave Grohl is revealed to be a bit of megalomaniac.  One of the band’s electricians is killed in what appears to be a freak accident.  Most people would move out of a house after someone dies under mysterious circumstances but not this band!  Instead, the band decides to dedicate the album to the memory of the dead guy.

Soon, however, there are a lot more dead people at the mansion.  Why are there so many dead people there?  This is going to sound like a spoiler but it’s not….

DAVE GROHL IS KILLING THEM!

Yes, Dave Grohl has been possessed by the evil spirit of mansion.  On the one hand, it’s given him the inspiration necessary to get over his writer’s block.  On the other hand, it also leads to him killing the other members of the band in various grotesque ways.  Studio 666 is a horror comedy that doesn’t shy away from the gore.  If you’ve ever wanted to see a member of Foo Fighters get cut in half with a chainsaw while having sex with Whitney Cummings, I guess this is the film to track down.  (Cummings, I should note, does not play herself.  This film stars the band as themselves but it’s also filled with recognizable actors who are not playing themselves.)

Studio 666 is a bit of a lark, a horror film starring a band that most people don’t really associate with the horror genre.  Indeed, a good deal of the film’s humor comes from the fact that it’s Dave Grohl doing all of the killing.  In real life, a good deal of Dave Grohl’s appeal is that he comes across as being as close to a regular guy as a rock star can be.  He’s one those famous guys who most people could imagine having a beer with.  Studio 666 gets a lot of mileage out of presenting Dave Grohl as being a pretentious taskmaster who would happily sell his soul for the chance to have a successful solo career.  It helps that Dave Grohl seems to be having a blast playing such an exaggerated version of himself.  It’s hard not to be happy for him because he really does appear to having the time of his life.

That said, once Grohl is revealed to be the killer (and that happens very early in the film so, again, this is not a spoiler), the film really has nowhere else to go.  The whole thing simply becomes Grohl tracking down various members of the band and killing them in grotesque ways and it gets to be a little boring.  There’s little suspense and, since the Foo Fighters are playing themselves, there really aren’t any stakes because we know the band wasn’t actually murdered while recording a new album.  With a 106-minute running time, Studio 666 really grinds its one joke into the ground.

I will say that longtime fans of Foo Fighters will probably enjoy the film, if just because there’s several jokes and comments that are obviously meant to be inside jokes that only a select few will get.  Personally, I think it’s nice that the band did something for the fans, even if the movie itself doesn’t really work.